FEATURE:
Pass the Mic
Beastie Boys' Check Your Head at Thirty
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BY the time their third album…
arrived in 1992, Beastie Boys moved in a new direction. Although their first album, 1986’s Licensed to Ill, was successful, 1989’s Paul’s Boutique did not connect with critics straight away. Its sample-heavy and denser sound meant that it took years for the album to gain proper recognition. Check Your Head is the Beastie Boys moving away (to an extent) from a large amount of samples to using more natural instruments. Pass the Mic, Gratitude and So What'cha Want are classic slices from Ad-Rock, MCA and Mike D. Produced solely by Mario Caldato, Jr. (who was one of the producers on Paul’s Boutique), Check Your Head made number ten on the Billboard 200. It was well-received, even if some were confused by the cross-pollination and new direction. At twenty tracks, Check Your Head is never sprawling and composed or too many weak tracks. With no track lasting as long as five minutes, there is focus and concision in terms of song length. I think that there will be a lot of celebration of Beasties’ classic third studio album on 21st April. It is one of the trio’s strongest albums. I am going to come to a couple of reviews. Before that, it is worth checking back on a couple of features that spotlighted an album that helped to revive and maintain the careers of one of Hip-Hip’s most important and innovative acts.
Loud Wire marked the twenty-ninth anniversary of Check Your Head on 21st April last year. Maybe out of necessity, Beasties moved to relying less on samples and playing their own instruments. They still managed to be uniquely them and hugely innovating regarding their sonics and lyrics:
“The trio had long shown their rock influences through samples on their Licensed to Ill and Paul's Boutique albums, but with Check Your Head, they began to shift more toward playing their own instruments and reclaiming the punk and hardcore roots of their pre-fame days before rap put them on the map. Part of the reason for this was the increasing restraints on sampling that were happening at the time.
In a 1992 interview with Uncut, Mike D. stated, "It's kind of a drag cause there's no real established guidelines … You just kind of have to do it and then try to make a deal for it." In doing so, they ran into a few issues. The Jimi Hendrix estate initially denied a wealth of samples used in the song "Jimmy James," but later granted the group permission. They were not as lucky when it came to a sample of James Newton who took the group to court over the use of a portion of his track "Choir" in "Pass the Mic." The band had paid Newton's label, but the artist was not happy with the situation. Eventually, the Beasties were found not liable for the sample.
But even with the sampling issues, the Beasties were already planning on breaking new ground. They started by building their own G-Son Studio with the help of producer Mario Caldato Jr. and keyboardist Money Mark. After the studio was built, it allowed the band the time and access needed to work out musical ideas without having to worry about studio budgets.
"There was talk of making it an instrumental record for a while," explained Mike D. on the 2009 Check Your Head reissue commentary. "For the first year and a half where we just came into the studio and played our instruments every day, we didn't even mess with the vocals for a long time." As a result, the band ended up with funk-based instrumentals like "Lighten Up" and "Groove Holmes," while other tracks were more jam-based like "POW" and "Namaste."
But this approach shouldn't surprise anyone knowing the Beasties' history. "Pretty much from our first indie record, we just do what we do in the moment," Mike D. told Hangin' With MTV. "We're just fortunate that other people are able to deal with it".
It is shocking to think that Beastie Boys needed to prove themselves on Check Your Head. A misunderstood classic, 1989’s Paul’s Boutique was too rich and accomplished for critics who were expected something simple and overly-accessible. Check Your Head was not a compromise; rather, it was an album that granted them the recognition and acclaim that they deserved all along. Albuism cast an eye back in 2017. They discussed the Beasties moving to Los Angeles (from their native New York) and almost starting over:
“Check Your Head, the Beastie Boys’ third official release, was a critical comeback album. People who weren’t there may have trouble believing that, but it’s the absolute truth. Paul’s Boutique, their dizzying, Dust-Brothers-produced, sonic-collage sophomore effort, now widely regarded as a classic, was nearly a career-killing commercial flop when it arrived in 1989. Yes, Paul’s Boutique may have gone Gold. But it was originally shipped platinum by Capitol Records, the Beastie Boys’ new label, on the heels of their five-million-selling 1986 debut Licensed to Ill on Def Jam, after a lengthy contract dispute during the late eighties.
So, what to do now, after making a highly slept-on, sample-based-symphony, which also served as a tribute to New York City, an album that by any commercial measurement, flopped?!? Well, move to Los Angeles, of course. Then, over the course of 1991, while as lifelong friends in their late-twenties having fun in the sun, workshop this garage-rap/rock “musical masterpiece.”
Make no mistake, Check Your Head saved the Beasties’ career. It also drew up a blueprint for the territory they would go on to mine for the duration of their shared prime. This formula might have taken them outside the realms of what true-school folks consider hip-hop, placing them perilously close to the alt-rock campfire that was raging at the time. But that was never truly their bag. This album remained true to who the Beastie Boys actually were. And in the words of Daniel Day-Lewis as Hawkeye, in Last of the Mohicans, a film released during the same year, Check Your Head would go on to make sure that these three-brothers-from-another-mother, would “Stay alive, no matter what occurs.”
The Beasties did more than stay alive. With the Check Your Head’s release one quarter of a century ago, the Beasties would go on to thrive. Blessed with hindsight, we don’t think about this album in those terms now. But I clearly recall the first time I heard this album. It was near the cement stairs of a major bank in Philadelphia, near Independence Hall off Market Street, where a wonderfully multi-ethnic group of young skaters were pumping it on cassette out of a boombox while my friends performed rail-slides. As a hip-hop junkie, I’d already all-but-forgotten the Beastie Boys. Shortly after hearing “Pass the Mic,” the lead and arguably most crucial single on the album, the loud music coupled with teenage rebellion resulted in cops showing up. Next thing we all knew, we were running for what felt like our young lives. I will remember the way that new music, and moment, made me feel for the rest of my lifetime”.
In spite of some not completely bonding with Check Your Head, the reaction in 1992 was more supportive than back in 1989. Maybe at the time it was unusual for Beasties fans. Check Your Head is very different to Paul’s Boutique. Now, it was bridge to their 1994 album, Ill Communication. AllMusic wrote this in their review of the masterful and dazzling Check Your Head:
“Check Your Head brought the Beastie Boys crashing back into the charts and into public consciousness, but that was only partially due to the album itself -- much of its initial success was due to the cult audience that Paul's Boutique cultivated in the years since its initial flop release, a group of fans whose minds were so thoroughly blown by that record, they couldn't wait to see what came next, and this helped the record debut in the Top Ten upon its April 1992 release. This audience, perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, was a collegiate Gen-X audience raised on Licensed to Ill and ready for the Beastie Boys to guide them through college. As it happened, the Beasties had repositioned themselves as a lo-fi, alt-rock groove band. They had not abandoned rap, but it was no longer the foundation of their music, it was simply the most prominent in a thick pop-culture gumbo where old school rap sat comfortably with soul-jazz, hardcore punk, white-trash metal, arena rock, Bob Dylan, bossa nova, spacy pop, and hard, dirty funk.
What they did abandon was the psychedelic samples of Paul's Boutique, turning toward primitive grooves they played themselves, augmented by keyboardist Money Mark and co-producer Mario Caldato, Jr.. This all means that music was the message and the rhymes, which had been pushed toward the forefront on both Licensed to Ill and Paul's Boutique, have been considerably de-emphasized (only four songs -- "Jimmy James," "Pass the Mic," "Finger Lickin' Good," and "So What'cha Want" -- could hold their own lyrically among their previous work). This is not a detriment, because the focus is not on the words, it's on the music, mood, and even the newfound neo-hippie political consciousness. And Check Your Head is certainly a record that's greater than the sum of its parts -- individually, nearly all the tracks are good (the instrumentals sound good on their subsequent soul-jazz collection, The in Sound From Way Out), but it's the context and variety of styles that give Check Your Head its identity. It's how the old school raps give way to fuzz-toned rockers, furious punk, and cheerfully gritty, jazzy jams. As much as Paul's Boutique, this is a whirlwind tour through the Beasties' pop-culture obsessions, but instead of spinning into Technicolor fantasies, it's earth-bound D.I.Y. that makes it all seem equally accessible -- which is a big reason why it turned out to be an alt-rock touchstone of the '90s, something that both set trends and predicted them”.
I will finish off with a review from The A.V. Club. Even if Check Your Head is quite accessible and has been part of the landscape for almost thirty years, it is an album that is quite unconventional and odd:
“Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head has been a dorm-room staple and cultural touchstone for so long that it can be easy to overlook how staggeringly odd it actually is. It was just as radical a reinvention as its predecessor, Paul’s Boutique, but listeners by then were expecting the Boys to take big chances. They embraced the group’s strangely organic evolution into adventurous sonic astronauts who segued effortlessly from punk (“Time For Livin’”) to Meters-style funk to trippy psychedelia to ominous metal-infused rap-rock (the monster single “So What’cha Want”).
Head was a homecoming on multiple fronts, as the group headed back to New York after a fertile sojourn on the West Coast, and simultaneously returned to using guitars, drums, bass, and Money Mark’s powerhouse organ to recreate the sounds in their heads and record collections. With Head, the Beastie Boys treated the studio as their favorite instrument. They went a little crazy with the studio motherfuckery, though given the optimism and infectious good humor that pervades the album, it’s altogether likely that they piled on the distortion to avoid losing hip-hop credibility and revealing what nice, responsible young men they’d become. The remastered two-disc Head reissue includes a bonus disc of goofy outtakes and B-sides, though for every essential track like the Soul Assassin remix of “So What’cha Want,” there are a few ragingly inessential novelty numbers like “Boomin’ Granny,” “Honky Rink,” and an endless live jam with Biz Markie. The second disc compiles a lot of the silliness the Boys apparently had to get out of their system before they could release an album this (relatively) mature”.
On 21st April, we get to mark thirty years of the immense Check Your Head. Ingenious and overflowing with fruitful and hugely impactful ideas, I wonder whether some of those who put the album down slightly in 1992 will reassess in 2022. I do feel Check Your Head is an album that houses so many tracks the Beastie Boys’ best moments. Check Your Head contains a track called Pass the Mic. With their 1992 missile, Beastie Boys confidently…
DROPPED the mic!